There is no such thing as a routine traffic stop, as public safety officers continue to get hurt or killed while conducting them. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) statistics estimate that between 2001 and 2010, 95 public safety officers died during traffic stops and 4,752 were assaulted.
A traffic stop is always an at-risk situation because one never knows who is in the vehicle and what the intentions are of the vehicle's occupants. Further, one also does not know what objects, such as guns, may be inside the vehicle and how any such objects can be used against a public safety officer. Additionally, in high-risk traffic stops, such as may result from pursuit of a vehicle believed to have been involved in a felony crime, approaching the vehicle may pose an extreme risk to the public safety officer. With advanced artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics, some of these risks may be mitigated by allowing some actions to be undertaken by an unmanned robotic vehicle.
One of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common and well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. It will further be appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required.